AI & the future
The three postures of AI adoption: resist, ignore or enable
The three postures of AI adoption: resist, ignore or enable. Why blanket bans worry me, and how leaders can help their teams use AI well.
Original category
Management
AI & the future
Open Source - Five Reasons Companies Give Away AI Models That Cost Billions to Build
I was genuinely confused about this one, so I decided to write a blog post abotu it to force myself to do the research. Alibaba, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek and Nvidia have all spent enormous sums...
AI & the future
The Problem With Billing by the Hour When Agents Do the Work
We ran a Spec Review recently and came back to the client with an estimate of around $300k, Time and Materials. Before the work started, the Solution Architect on the job wanted to see what would...
AI & the future
Get your head in the game: The rise of the 10× employee
This is a message for employees who want to be more effective, more useful, and harder to ignore. There is a growing mismatch in most organisations. Individual capability has expanded rapidly,...
AI & the future
Cognitive Offloading with AI: Clear Your Mind, Boost Your Productivity
Ever find yourself mentally juggling too many tasks? Meetings, deadlines, follow-ups - the list seems endless. Cognitive overload happens when you push your brain to handle more information than...
AI & the future
The Evolution of Software Development from Command Lines to AI
As someone deeply entrenched in the world of technology and software development, I've witnessed firsthand the remarkable evolution of this industry. It's been a journey from the early days of...
Business & consulting
The 9 Principles for Selling Custom Software Development
In a world where technology changes at the speed of light, some principles for selling custom software development remain timeless. Discover the enduring sales strategies that have stood the test...
AI & the future
Boosting Productivity at Work: How Managers of Software Companies Can Use GPT-4 and Get Their Employees on Board
So, at the moment, I'm thinking a lot about how to take advantage of ChatGPT, so I thought I'd map it all out into a blog post to help me crystalise my thoughts. I'm also, of course, using it to...
AI & the future
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt. It is part of the GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) family of language models,...
Working smarter
Responsive Web App vs Native Mobile App
Many businesses are dealing with this quandary at the moment, and there a number of factors to keep in mind when deciding how to cater for users on mobile devices. These factors can be broadly...
Working smarter
9 Tips for Searching Effectively in Outlook
Some people are really good at using Outlook search to find the emails they need, while others have a hard time. Searching for emails can be a real struggle, sometimes you want to find emails from...
Leadership & teams
The Art of Negotiation
Chris Voss is the expert on this topic, and I highly recommend his book “Never split the difference: Negotiate as if your life depends on it”. Most people go into a negotiation assuming that it is...
Working smarter
The 80-20 rule (AKA the Pareto Principle)
There’s a filter I try to use every day to make sure I’m maximizing the effect my work is having on the business. It’s called the 80-20 rule, or the Pareto Principle. The theory states that 20% of...
Leadership & teams
Managing Remote Workers
This past year has been surprisingly busy for IT professionals. When COVID hit, we all battened down the hatches, expecting a potential business downturn. However, within a month, a wave of new...
Leadership & teams
The 5 Levels of Leadership
The world renowned Leadership expert, John Maxwell, has defined 5 levels of leadership, and we'll go through each one here, to help you understand how to advance through the levels, and also to...
AI & the future
Bots! Huh! What are they good for?
Figure: Click here to chat... maybe to a real person, or maybe to a bot Bots are pieces of software that can speak and be spoken to, either in text form, e.g. web chat, or in voice form, e.g....
Leadership & teams
The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model
I found a small book at an airport recently called "The Decision Book: Fifty models for strategic thinking". It's a nice easy read and a good thought provoker, and one of the models in particular...
Working smarter
The 12 Biggest Benefits of an Intranet
With so many companies now using some flavour of Microsoft Office 365, the question of whether to make use of SharePoint Online to build a company intranet as part of your digital workspace is...
Leadership & teams
How to Motivate your Team - The Power of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
The number 1 tool that employers think they have to motivate their team is dollar compensation. A higher pay should equate to higher motivation to perform well at work, but actually this is only...
Business & consulting
The Five Advantages That Consultants Have Over Employees
Internal employees have context. They have worked inside an organisation for potentially many years and surely know the business better than anyone… so why hire consultants? There are a number of...
Working smarter
The Five Things Every Scrum Master Should Do
The larger a Scrum team is, the more opportunity for wastage there is, and so the more difference a good Scrum Master makes. A team with a bad Scrum master can feel powerless, floundering,...
Leadership & teams
The Importance of Positively Managing Conflict in a Team
Teams don’t always just hum along. People have personal and professional differences, and sweeping them under the rug is not healthy long term, and could eventually cause a full breakdown. If...
AI & the future
The 5 Technologies that Will Change Everything in the Next Decade
Here's my take on the main technology areas that will make a massive difference to our lives in the next decade. Artificial Intelligence This is a huge one and encompasses something as simple as...
Leadership & teams
The Sunk Cost Fallacy
The sunk cost fallacy is in action every time you: Sit through a long boring movie even if you decided after the first half an hour that is was terrible Finish a meal that tastes bad and after...
Leadership & teams
How to Delegate Effectively (Orders vs Enrolment)
There are 2 ways that you can allocate work. You can give orders, or you can enrol people. Orders: This is most people's default way of delegating work. To do it well, you speak to the person...
Business & consulting
Power BI - The Six Reports Every Consultancy Should Have
I've been at SSW, a medium sized custom software consultancy, for over 10 years, and in that time I've asked for a number of SQL Reporting Services reports to be made, but due to the difficulty in...
Working smarter
Seven Tips to Being a Great Product Owner
Every software product in development has a Product Owner who is in charge of supplying the requirements, and it is often misunderstood how important this role is. You can have the best engine in...
Leadership & teams
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
There are five interrelated issues that undermine the performance of a team, and they can be viewed from 2 angles: The Negative Angle This is popular because as managers we're often looking for...
